Tag: canada

I live in Burlington, Ontario, a nice lakeside city near Toronto. This story happened to me during a school trip when I was in eighth grade. At my elementary school, which by the way was Catholic, everyone in grade eight would get to go on two trips as part of their final year at the school. One trip took place in the fall and was usually a religious camping trip that took place about forty minutes out of the city. By religious, I mean everyone had to participate in group activities that revolved around being a good Christian and teamwork, etc. This, of course, completely sucked as this “camp” was little more than a religion class stretched to three days.

The second school trip always took place in the spring and was usually a trip to Ottawa for the weekend where we could explore the city and visit museums. For some reason, it was decided my year would instead take another camping trip (at a camp I will not name) about four hours away at Algonquin Provincial Park. The camp was on one of the many lakes in the park and was set up like your pretty typical summer camp. Cabins were spread out near the lake and partially in the forest and there were bathrooms and a mess hall in separate buildings. As you would guess, boys and girls shared separate cabins. The girls’ cabins were built on supports above the ground and were the ones closer to the lake. Our cabins were almost in the forest and built on the ground along a gravel road. I shared a larger cabin with about four other guys. Although our cabin was the largest, it was probably the least comforting. While the other cabins had actual windows and doors that would fully close and lock, our cabin looked like it was built from balsa wood, only had thin bug-screens for windows and a door that wouldn’t close. I should also point out that I had no experience with actual camping, as my family hates it, so this was a pretty bad first impression.

This is where the “creepy” story actually starts. On the first evening, we were all gathered outside the mess hall for a fun night activity. The camp counsellors told us about a hermit that lived in the nearby woods. The activity was that they were going to take us into the dark woods in groups to see where this hermit lived. This kind of caught us by surprise as it was quite random, but intriguing at the same time. As you would expect, everyone was pretty much screaming as we were led deeper into the woods with only our flashlights, looking for this hermit’s house. When we finally came across this “house”, which was little more than a huge log with a makeshift bed, we were led back to camp.

Although my group didn’t see anything, other people started talking about seeing someone creep around the dark woods. Someone in my cabin even said they saw blue, glowing eyes in the darkness. I shrugged it off, thinking the whole hermit story was made up by the camp to scare us, and the person in the woods was just a counsellor.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of someone sprinting down the gravel road that ran near our cabin. At first I was startled, and a little creeped out, but then I thought it might have just been an animal. That was, until, I started hearing the gravel crunch around our cabin. It was very soft, but definitely a person. I was suddenly terrified. My bed was right beside the door that didn’t lock. An animal could have easily pushed the door open on its own and walked inside if it wanted to. There was also nothing covering the screens, so the person outside could clearly see in. I was ready to scream as loud as possible if someone entered the cabin. I had my eyes locked on the door, anticipating to see it slowly open. But it never did. The sound outside slowly disappeared into the woods. Immediately, I thought it must have been the hermit. I ruled out the possibility of it being a counsellor or teacher because it was at least three in the morning, which was an odd time to check on students. Surprisingly, I was able to fall back asleep a short while later.

That was the only interesting part of the camping trip unfortunately. The rest of the trip was pretty dreadful. It rained non-stop for the remaining days and a few people from my class caught the flu from another school that was sharing the camp with us, so the bus was partially quarantined on the way back home.

As time passed, I mostly forgot about the creepy encounter, giving in to the possibility that it was just a counsellor checking on us. The story doesn’t end there though. The following year, it was my younger sister’s turn to go on the same eighth grade camping trip. Just like for my class, she also had to go on the weird hermit expedition during the first night. Although she initially thought nothing of it, during one of the other days when she and a few friends were exploring the woods along the lake, she described seeing a small hermit-like person sitting on a log in the distance.

I know this isn’t the scariest camping story to be told, but it creeps me out knowing that the hermit was indeed real, and that this camp thought it was “fun” to lead a bunch of kids to this random person’s house in the middle of the woods. The hermit also isn’t afraid to peek on unsuspecting campers in the dead of night.

It’s been almost ten years since this happened and I haven’t done anything camping related since.

This story was inspired by our scary experience in Algonquin Park, Canada, where we got stuck on a road called Lac Wendigo.

My family and I were camping up North for some time. But sadly after 6 days we had to leave.
It was early in the morning when we left, about 8:00.

I was with 3 people. My mother Cindy, and my 2 cousins Sheryl and Samatha.

As we were driving, my mother, being the outdoorsy type, wanted Sheryl to drive through her favourite place, Algonquin Provincial Park.

It was simply gorgeous. I was eight the last time I went, so I hadn’t remembered it much.

I was too busy taking photos to realize Sheryl had turned down a road with the name Lac Wendigo.

It was quite a narrow road. We stopped a few times to have a snack and take some pictures.

“I’ve got to turn around.” Sheryl said as she looked for a wide spot to turn. The only problem was there was nothing but a narrow path. She ended up having to unhook her trailer and back up until she could turn around.

In the meantime blackflies and deerflies swarmed her car. It got so bad that we had to roll the windows up. Even then all you could hear was tapping on the glass from the flies ramming into it.

Sheryl was finally able to turn her car around, but she had to back up to get the trailer. Both Sheryl and Samantha were panicking. Their faces both filled with dread.

Everyone got out of the car when we drove to the trailer. We turned it around and hooked it up. Then I heard Sheryl curse under her breath as we got back in.

All for of us got out of that place rather quickly. Though, as we were exiting I got the feeling I was being watched. So I looked back, and behind me stood something I’d never forget.

There was a tall creature, that looked like a moose, but it was standing on its hind legs. It looked at me so… angerly. The creature stared at me with white glowing eyes and a wide killer smile.

I don’t remember much of it because I felt like I had blacked out. But it still haunts my nightmares to this day.

To start out, here is some background information. I am a 17 year old male that lives in Northern Minnesota back in the states. I consider myself muscular I weigh around 200 pounds and I go to the gym every morning. So because I am a teenager that works out everyday and is a starting linebacker on the high school football team I am very cocky and not easily scared.

So every summer my friend and I drive up to Bitscho Lake in Alberta. We usually go fishing in our little boat and that’s what we were doing today. We just got done fishing and we are driving our fishing boat back to our cabin, my friend Zach stops the boat and starts clenching his ears. I notice obviously and look over and ask “hey man are you ok?”. He responds with “what the hell is that noise, do you hear that?”. Confused I answer while looking around at the surrounding lake “no what does it sound like?”.

He looks around for about 10 seconds and responds “it was like a super high pitched howl that sounded like it was right next to me, but now it’s gone.” So he starts the boat backup and we drive back to our cabin undisturbed. A couple of hours later we are playing the new call of duty together in the living room when something that sounded like a rock hits our window. We both jump and Zach screams “what the f*ck” and goes to check it out.

I’m sitting on the couch and I tell him “it was probably a bird bro just finish this game with me” he walks over and sits down and we start playing again. 3 pm comes around and we are still playing call of duty and this god awful high pitched howl as he described it on the boat blares outside of our cabin.

Zach screams “that was the noise!” as we both run the window and look outside to find nothing. Then Zach who is fed up with what ever prankster that is screwing with us grabs a kitchen knife and runs out the front door yelling “whoever is out there come here and show your self this isn’t funny” I get up and run outside with him looking around.

The next thing I saw will forever haunt me and I will never in my entire life return to that cabin. This elk appears from the forestry, then gets up on its hind legs and lets out that horrific high pitch howl we heard from before. We both make a beeline for our truck that was parked in the driveway to our right Zach hops in the passenger as I dig for my keys in my right pocket while with my left hand locking all of the doors, I finally find the keys and shove them into my truck and start the car.

I pound my foot on gas zipping down the driveway then turning onto the dirt road and zoom away. Zach and I look at each other speechless while looking at our cabin noticing that the thing is gone. What we think we saw was a skinwalker but I am still terrified and I know I wasn’t seeing things because Zach and I both saw it.

The image I included is what the thing looked like except with a elk face.

A little background on this story: This happened in March 2007, I was fourteen at the time and lived with my dad and my sister in a small town in Quebec. We had two dogs at the time, a Great Dane named Fergie and a Husky named Cormac.

I encountered this thing a couple of times, and I’ve never told anybody about it before. The first time I saw it I was out walking Fergie and Cormac at about midday. We were walking on a path through a forest, when suddenly, Cormac went behind me and started whimpering, and Fergie started growling and barking at someone, or someting that I couldn’t see. I got the chills and felt uneasy. Now, I’m a strong believer in the supernatural and had heard of encounters similar to these before, and immediately took my cross off from around my neck and brandished it towards the direction in which Fergie whad been growling and told whatever it was to leave. I saw a translucent black shape writhe in what I assume was agony and then disappear.

Me being the confidant and cocky adolescent I was, I went back there to walk them again, but this time at around 9 o’clock PM. I cam to a clearing that I had never even seen before, and there was an old tool shed that seemed very out of place. When I got near it, I felt extremely uneasy, but took out the bottle of holy water that I took because of the first encounter.

I went into the shack, and saw that the back wall had a large amount of what I dearly hope has just reddish brown paint, and that there was a rusty dagger in the middle of the dirt floor pointing towards the back wall. I felt an extreme sense of dread here and the dogs were bothabout to bolt out of there and run. What happened next has scarred me for life. I saw the same black mass with gloing red eyes lunge ate me, at which point I dropped the bottle of holy water which fell to the ground and ,thank god, shattered and spilled everywhere, at which point the demon, if that is indeed what it was, writhed where it was for a moment before disappearing.

I then proceeded to run the 20km back to my apartment at full speed never once stopping or looking back. Lont story short, a demon tried to kill me, and would have suceeded If I hadn’t dropped a bottle of holy water. I never once went anywhere near those woods again.

This encounter took place in 2010. My boyfriend and I were in our mid-twenties. It was summertime. We were lucky enough to get time off work at the same time, so we decided to spend a couple nights at my family cabin. The cabin is located in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, in a remote area about 40 minutes away from the nearest town. It’s on a medium sized lake surrounded by dense forest. There are only 20 cabins on the lake, spread out quite far from each other. We were there in the middle of the week, so there weren’t many people on the lake. I should mention that the cabin is on an island.

Our plan was to get there Tuesday night and leave Thursday morning. We arrived and spent the first night without incident. On Wednesday, we took the canoe out for a short ride. We parked it on the mainland and went on a hike down an old logging road. The road hasn’t been driven down in years. It’s overgrown and as far as I know people only use it for blueberry picking now, but it goes into the bush for quite a few kilometers. The two of us hiked down the road for 2 hours, sat down for a small lunch, then decided to turn back. On our way back, I couldn’t shake the heavy feeling that we were being watched and followed. It only occurred to me then that if anything bad were to happen to us, no one was coming to help. In hindsight, we should have told someone about our hiking plans, just in case, but it was too late for that. I tried my best to dismiss how I felt and didn’t even mention it to my boyfriend.

We found the canoe where we had left it tied up. We got in and started paddling home. I was in the back of the canoe, steering. I couldn’t help but turn around and look behind us. The first time I did so, I thought I saw a large shadow move in among the trees a short distance from where we had parked the canoe. When I looked back the second time, I saw nothing. I immediately dismissed what I saw. I reminded myself that your eyes can easily play tricks on you when looking into the shadows of a densely packed forest.

We got back to the cabin, had something to eat, played some cards and hung out. At around midnight, we decided to head down to the dock to do some stargazing. We’re lucky enough to see the northern lights all year round. We were sitting on the dock, looking at the stars, when we started kissing. Thirty seconds later, just behind us, there was a loud crash back in the bush. It sounded like there was a big animal moving around, breaking branches and twigs about 60 feet away from us. Whatever it was, it was HUGE. We both instantly turned around. My boyfriend asked, “What is that?!” “I have no idea,” I said, “We don’t get animals that big on the island.” Just then, the creature started grunting and stomping its feet on the ground. My boyfriend muttered, “What the…?” “I… I don’t know,” I replied. It was so dark outside that we couldn’t see anything in the direction of the sounds. Neither of us had bothered to bring a flashlight as it was easy enough for us to walk back up the path by following the kitchen light we’d left on. We both stood up and ran back up to the cabin.

Back inside, we closed everything but the kitchen window and sat there and listened. Nothing. We heard nothing outside. We tried to look out the windows, but it was pitch black. We sat there and discussed what it could have been. We decided the only two animals remotely that big in the area are moose, which are extremely rare and have never been seen on the island, and black bears. I explained to my boyfriend that bears rarely swim out to the island from the mainland. We hadn’t had one on our property in years. “Besides,” I joked, “since when do black bears interrupt people having romantic moments in the moonlight by crashing through the bush and stomping their feet?” My boyfriend didn’t think that was so funny.

We eventually went to bed. There are two single beds in the back bedroom. One of the beds is situated right under the bedroom window. The pillow sits about 2 inches below the window sill. This is the bed I always sleep in. I like to keep the window open to let in the fresh forest air and sounds. That night I kept the window closed tight and pulled the blinds shut. We were laying in our beds talking when all of a sudden this horrible smell enveloped my entire head. It was like nothing I had ever smelled before. It was a putrid combination of wet dog, body odor, and rotting garbage. I will never forget that smell. I must have made a disgusted noise because my boyfriend asked what was wrong. I told him to come over to my bed and smell the horrible stench coming through the window. He smelled it too. Again, we had no idea what it was and neither of us wanted to open the blinds to investigate. The smell disappeared as quickly as it had come. A short time later we went to sleep.

The next morning we thoroughly checked around the cabin and dock for signs of bear. We found nothing. We ate a quick breakfast and left the cabin for home.

It honestly didn’t occur to me until weeks later what the creature could have been… a Sasquatch. Although not as prevalent as on the west coast of North America, there is a long history of Bigfoot sightings in the woods of Northwestern Ontario. I did a bit of research and discovered that Sasquatch have been known to display ape-like behavior such as throwing rocks and stomping feet. People that have close encounters with Bigfoot often report the creature having a very strong odor. In addition, Bigfoot are widely believed to be very strong swimmers, so it would have had no problem following us back to the cabin by swimming and island hopping.

As an avid camper, hiker, and lifelong cottager, who has seen many bears over the years, I don’t believe for a second that that thing was a bear. Over the 50 plus years my family has owned the property, every bear has left obvious evidence behind. Evidence such as piles of excrement, claw marks on window sills and walls of the cabin, ripped patio and window screens, or tipped over garbage cans and barbecue. Bears create a lot of noise and can be very destructive. The creature we encountered was quiet and sneaky when it wanted to be. Too clever for a bear.

The creature must have followed us back from our hike down the logging road. And to think it could have been only inches away from my head, listening and sniffing me through the thin pane of glass. These thoughts give me the chills to this day. My boyfriend never believed my Bigfoot theory, but he did admit he doubted it was a bear. If not a bear, than what was it? I’ll never go down that logging road again and next time I feel like something is following me through the woods, I’ll trust my instincts and run.